The Selective Moral Focus Of Evangelicals

Superficiality and hypocrisy have been the norm for all of recorded church history, with conservative and liberal Christians blatantly continuing that trend in contemporary times.  Liberals might insist they their tenets consistently align with those of Christian ethics, but conservatism is more widely equated with Christianity itself, however, and thus it is vital to clarify that the two seldomly overlap at most.  Conservative Christians may be vocal, but they mostly focus on such a small handful of moral issues that they fail to be consistent in any broad sense.  Their general rejection of Mosaic Law inevitably results in a highly selective engagement with Biblical ethics.

In fact, only a select few matters are even brought up by the representative evangelical, with homosexual activities and abortion being the two primary things that conservative Christians consistently discuss and condemn.  It is not that the Bible does not condemn these two deeds; it takes only minimal reading comprehension skills and rationalistic analysis to see that it does.  The problem is that so many Christians are completely silent on a large number of other moral issues that sometimes deserve even more attention--the sexual abuse of men and women always deserves more attention than sexual sins that do not have that element, for instance, and murder is far from the worst thing that one human could inflict on another on its own.

There is nothing particularly deep about merely establishing that the Bible does indeed condemn homosexual behaviors and abortion, although there might be a personal struggle involved in reaching that point.  Nevertheless, far too many Christians act as if they have lived out the pinnacle of Christian ethics in opposing these two sins, as if Biblical ethics reduces down to a defense of these two points!  Ironically, evangelicals have no problem visiting the Old Testament when it comes to these two specific sins (as they should), but they pretend like most of the surrounding commands no longer apply.  Anyone who has read the Bible beyond the most superficial level has seen that the Bible plainly prescribes moral obligations that go far beyond targeting homosexual actions (there is nothing sinful about simply having homosexual feelings, as the Bible only unilaterally condemns homosexual behaviors) and murder.

What about anti-intellectualism?  Intellectual hypocrisy?  Prison rape (it is especially asinine that many Christians are very vocal about opposing consensual homosexual behaviors while ignoring homosexual assaults in prisons)?  Female-male sexual assault?  Domestic abuse?  The epidemic of leftover sexism that continues to harm men and women?  The host of legalistic constructs the church is enamored with?  One could continue to list offenses that Christians largely overlook.  The church fails to uphold its collective obligations as long as it does not oppose these things at least just as fiercely, and perhaps even more fiercely, than it does things such as consensual expressions of homosexuality and abortion that are immediately popular in Western culture.

Biblical morality encompasses so much more than two individual stances could ever summarize.  Most of it, of course, is not even found in the New Testament.  To the frustration of many Christians, the New Testament is not the primary source of moral revelation in the Bible; much of New Testament ethics is at best only a vague commentary on Mosaic Law on its own.  It is Exodus and Deuteromomy (and Leviticus to a lesser extent) that contain the bulk of Biblical moral doctrines.  The gospel writings and epistles do not bring up moral issues that Mosaic Law avoided.  New Testament ethics is contingent on the prior moral instructions in the Bible, not the other way around.